I. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to printers and more particularly to modifications to printers by which to apply images to edible paper such as to produce a decoration which can be placed directly onto an iced baked good, e.g., a cake with frosting, and eaten with the baked good.
II. Description of Prior Art
Cake and other baked good decorations are quite popular, especially among children. Such decorations typically consisted of hand-applied icing-based decorations and/or miniature toys placed onto the icing or frosting. More recently, in an attempt to satisfy commercial bakers, attempts have been made at providing mass produced decorations which minimize the need for the time and labor-intensive icing applications. Chief among such attempts is the decorated edible substrate sheet such as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,017,394 which is made by a silk screening process. As is well understood, the silk-screen process requires that the desired image be formed into several screens, one for each color. The screens are then used as templates to reproduce the image on the substrate by forcing edible coloring materials through the screen openings. The substrate may be placed on an iced or frosted cake and eaten therewith.
While the silk-screen printing process produces a decoration, that process is still somewhat time and labor-intensive. Moreover, with the silk screen process, the range of decorated designs has been somewhat limited. As the design must be formed into multiple screens, make-ready costs and inventory restraints limit the number of pre-made designs that will be on hand. Additionally, the silk screen process is an inherently low resolution process.
Many consumers are not satisfied with the limited design choices available. Indeed, many consumers would prefer to customize the decorations but cannot readily do so. By way of example, iced or frosted cakes having a decoration that depicts the face of the birthday child would be highly desirable. The silk screen process, however, is economically unsuitable for one-off or custom designs. Instead, such a decoration may be provided by placing the actual photograph or a reproduction thereof onto the icing. But the photograph or reproduction is not edible and so must be removed before the iced cake can be eaten.
An improvement to the photograph has been to provide a costly and complex cake printing system. In such a system, an electronic scanner digitalizes a photographic image, and a separate, electronic computer device drives a printer that sets over the iced cake to form the image directly on the cake. Not only is such a system slow, it requires several costly computer components. Moreover, the icing on the cake must be nearly perfectly flat so as not to impact or foul up the printer mechanism. The task of properly icing a cake for such a device is quite difficult and prone to error requiring greater sophistication on the part of the icer.
In an attempt to reduce the complexities involved with printing directly on to the icing, edible paper has been developed onto which the scanned or a stored image may be printed, such as with a conventional ink jet printer supplied with edible inks. The paper, bearing the printed image thereon, may then be placed directly onto the icing thereby decorating the baked good. Utilizing conventional printers to apply images to edible paper is much easier and eliminates the need to carefully ice the cake, and so may be seen as providing a cost-effective way of applying a wide range of color images to baked goods. Unfortunately, some of the very characteristics of edible paper which make it desirable for use on icing, present problems when the edible paper passes through the paper path of conventional printers. In particular, edible paper may be damaged by the paper-drive system typical of such printers leading to waste and increased cost. Moreover, the edible paper may tend to become jammed in the printer. While a jam with conventional paper is generally nothing more than an annoyance and can usually be cleared by even novice users, edible paper tends to adhere to the printer mechanisms and can become lodged in the printer requiring potentially time-consuming or expensive repairs, and could require attention from a skilled technician.